


In the Lioness's Mouth

by azaleaknight



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Afterlife, Bittersweet, F/M, Mentions of Angel, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 15:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11603373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azaleaknight/pseuds/azaleaknight
Summary: Angel goes to face dragons; Wesley, in meeting Lilah, has something else planned.  Post-"Not Fade Away."Happy birthday!





	In the Lioness's Mouth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seki/gifts).



The taste of hell was cinders and grit and withered roses; the taste of hell was rain and red lipstick and wrecked hopes. It was fitting, Wesley thought, that he should find all these things in Lilah's kisses.

In a moment (and how long was a moment, anyway, when you were dead?), the storm would unleash a downpour. The rain right now was only foreplay. Wesley hadn't been dead long, but already he missed absurd things: the cold, the damp, the way your toes squelched in their socks after a long night of monster-slaying. Even sunshine, he imagined, would bring him no warmth.

"You're thinking about him again," Lilah said. She wore pale clothes: beige blouse with pearly buttons, a slightly darker skirt. Only her scarf was dark, the color of clotted blood. She traced his jaw with her fingernails. Any more lightly and he wouldn't have felt her touch.

Who was he trying to fool? Across the halls of hell he'd feel her touch.

"I just betrayed him again," Wesley said quietly. "Of course I'm thinking about him."

She drew him closer for another kiss. This time her mouth tasted of sweet lies and sweeter sins, black hearts and betrayal. Business as usual. Neither of them had any particular need to breathe. Next door in the halls of hell, fire cooled to cinders and the cinders themselves dissipated in nowhere winds; the bones of earth eroded into malformed faces and blossoms that never grew beneath sun or moon.

"When we fucked, Wesley," Lilah said, "were you thinking of him?"

There was a time when he would have shoved her against the wall for that, kissed every syllable silent. Now he only regarded her coolly. "He would never," Wesley said.

"You like to think of yourself as his loyal knight and true," Lilah said. This time she traced the scar. It hurt as badly as it had when Justine had drawn the knife across his throat. "But what you really are is his dog. He kicks you and you go back whimpering for more."

Wesley laughed without pleasure. "I'll never see him again."

"Don't be a fool, Wes." She looked away from his face and over his shoulder, at the alley's empty mouth beyond them. "You'll see him over and over again, and each time he'll turn away from you. It doesn't matter how often you sell the dregs of your soul. Nothing will make him appreciate your loyalty."

Wesley said to the side of her face, "If you think I do this to be thanked, Lilah, you don't know me well at all."

She looked at him again. "This is me, Wes. You don't have to hide anything from me."

"That's just as well." He didn't shift his weight; he didn't move closer, or move away.

"Now you're being sentimental. Do I look like some blushing flower to you?" Her mouth curved. There was no tenderness in her voice.

Even in all the times they had fucked, Wesley had never surprised tenderness out of her. He hardly expected that to change. "I may as well be sentimental," he said. "This may be my last opportunity."

"Don't be absurd," Lilah said. "Haven't you noticed? You're in hell."

"Only its antechamber," Wesley said. He leaned in to kiss her. He thought he had memorized her every nuance during their nights together. Now he knew better. At the moment she smelled like seawater and storm winds, like a shipwreck jigsawing itself out of disaster.

"Tell me why you're here so early."

As if she hadn't already figured it out. "I had to die first," Wesley said, "so I could bargain for his humanity."

Lilah laughed for a long time. "I don't know why you would ascribe humanity to a creature who burns through his allies the way--"

"Betrayal is very human," Wesley said. "I ought to know. In any case, Lilah, I know he signed the scroll."

"Then you know he signed it willingly," she said. "That's not something you can undo."

"Curious," Wesley said. "I thought everything was negotiable."

"Pardon me," Lilah said, "but you're dead. What could you possibly offer?"

"I'm sorry," Wesley said.

Her eyes slitted. "For what?"

"Trapping you here," he said, "in the cold moment before the apocalypse begins." He felt he owed her a straightforward truth, this once.

"Don't be ridiculous," Lilah snapped. She pushed past him and walked to the center of the alley, her high heels clicking emphatically.

"Don't," Wesley said. "I researched the spell quite assiduously."

"You're out of your mind," Lilah said. "Did you think a hostage would give you some leverage? Wolfram and Hart doesn't care about me, Wes. I'm just one more cog in the machine."

Wesley leaned back against the wall and smiled thinly. "I doubt that," he said. "You must know something of use to me. Sooner or later you'll decide that getting out is preferable to being trapped in this moment like an insect in amber."

"You're just as trapped as I am."

He inclined his head. _That's always been true._ But he didn't say it out loud.

"I think eternity with you could be vastly entertaining," Lilah said. "The question is, do you feel the same way?"

"You know that's not why."

"Even if I could tell you what you wanted to know," Lilah said, "even if you restored to him what he threw away, he'd never know you were the one responsible."

"That's just as well," Wesley said without disguising his pain. "He would never trust any largesse from me."

Lilah regarded him curiously. "In my world," she said, "there may not be any such thing as friendship, but at least we're honest about being vipers."

"I never thought that was the sum of who you were."

"You were always hopelessly naive."

"Prove to me I'm wrong," Wesley said.

In no hurry at all, she sauntered toward him. "You'll regret it if I do," she said.

He kissed her hand.

"So tame," Lilah said.

"Only for you," he said. There would be time enough later to extract from her the information he needed.

Over and over, as they undressed each other beneath the iron sky, Wesley heard the voices of the friends he would never see again.


End file.
